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    artist spotlights

    Minoy

    By Don Campau | 17 November 2011

    Minoy often split his tapes into two "albums", one on each side. On side two the piece is called "Universities Of Lies"

Look closely and you can see he had earmaked this tape for me.

    Minoy often split his tapes into two “albums”, one on each side. On side two the piece is called “Universities Of Lies”

    Look closely and you can see he had earmaked this tape for me.

    I believe this was the first tape I received from Minoy. A sonic world unto its own.

side one: Bleak Counterpoint: This Is A Sentence      ( settings/sittings/readings)1.introduction and theme.

side two: Bleak Counterpoint:2. sonic development from 1987

One night after driving home in my car I had this tape in the cassette player and was so transfixed I had to listen to the entire 30 minute side before getting out. It was raining and the noise Minoy created had me in a trance and gave me some kind of unexplainable revelation.

Side two has "The Tyranny Of Distance"

    I believe this was the first tape I received from Minoy. A sonic world unto its own.

    side one: Bleak Counterpoint: This Is A Sentence ( settings/sittings/readings)1.introduction and theme.

    side two: Bleak Counterpoint:2. sonic development from 1987

    One night after driving home in my car I had this tape in the cassette player and was so transfixed I had to listen to the entire 30 minute side before getting out. It was raining and the noise Minoy created had me in a trance and gave me some kind of unexplainable revelation.

    Side two has “The Tyranny Of Distance”

    One rainy night I was driving home with this tape on my cassette deck. The lightning bolt static, the powerful noise blanketing me and transfixing me to my car seat even after I had arrived. I sat there in the dark hypnotized by the sound, the revelation.

    One rainy night I was driving home with this tape on my cassette deck. The lightning bolt static, the powerful noise blanketing me and transfixing me to my car seat even after I had arrived. I sat there in the dark hypnotized by the sound, the revelation.

    On the right, Minoy graces the cover of the July 1991 issue of Electronic Cottage magazine.

    On the right, Minoy graces the cover of the July 1991 issue of Electronic Cottage magazine.

    some assorted pics that were included with the feature article.

    some assorted pics that were included with the feature article.

    read testimonials

    In 1986 I became aware of the Los Angeles sound artist Minoy after receiving one of his tapes for my radio show. I didn’t know what to think at first. There was no accompanying letter, no personal exchange, nothing to grab on to and understand except the music. The sounds were challenging, irritating at times, hallucinogenic and mindblowing. Jack Jordan ( Option reviewer and music critic) explains his experience below and provides some interesting discography information.

    Jack Jordan

    Stanley Bowsza (aka “Minóy” ) was not only one of the acknowledged “creators” of the 1980s “homemade” independent music scene, he was also one of its most-acclaimed and well-known through his extensive collaborations with literally dozens of other luminaries in the burgeoning scene.

    Many have wondered how Mr. Bowsza came to adopt the name “Minóy.” It stemmed from his interest the visual arts: His favorite artist was Joan Miró, the renowned Catalan surrealist painter who died in 1983. One of Stanley’s friends, knowing this, mispronounced the artist’s name one time when discussing him with Stanley, referring to the artist as “Minóy.” Well, Stanley loved it, and the rest is history. As an aside, anyone who ever received a cassette from Minóy can attest to his talent with abstract art – some of his J-card cassette cover creations are works of art in themselves. And it was not unusual for him to artistically “decorate” the plastic cover so that it too became “art,” sometimes incorporating 3-D relief features with all kinds of embellishments.

    But Minóy is best known for his solo compositions, which number well over 100. Whether a C60 or C90 cassette boasted only one, or perhaps six, works of audio art, he is recognized as the master of controlled noise, who used every sound imaginable in the world around him as his audio palette. Many releases had only one or two compositions, and these gave him the time to develop his themes and hypnotically enshroud the listener in what were usually very powerful works – which made for a very memorable and powerful “trip.” This was the secret to his magic and magnetism – calling his music “noise” properly identifies it in the respectful lexicon of the time, but doesn’t do it justice. It was, rather, a composed and, again, controlled manipulated agglomeration of sounds, natural and/or composed, that sucked you in with its precision and power. Then again, some of his works were totally different in structure, delicate yet powerful little mantras with alien riffs and melodies, often using, notably, a toy mouth organ, manipulated, echoed and multi-tracked to sound like a warning call from heaven – or hell. He also reveled in manipulating the human voice, another ingredient in the brew of several of his works. In summary, Minóy knew how to expertly manipulate any sound with another sound to come up with an engrossing, totally unique, brain-bending opus.

    Minóy spent a couple of days with me in November 1987 in conjunction with a guest radio gig he was doing at a local radio station, and we toured San Francisco and the East Bay, visiting good record stores and doing a bit of the “tourist itinerary.” His recorder was clipped to his belt, always ready to capture interesting ambient sounds around us – which, with later manipulation and embellishments, were released as the Burning Tree (for Jack) cassette. It was great to meet him and I remember well his good humor, warm personality, acidic wit, and overall intelligence. He painted a wonderful work of abstract art for me, which hangs on our living-room wall to this day. We continued to keep in contact via phone and letters until we lost touch after he began a journey down different roads in the early ‘90s. But his music will live on forever.

    You can hear a Radio Special that Jack Jordan and I did in 1988 here

    It is a one hour mix of around 60 Minoy tapes.

    Partial Minoy discography below.

    Minoy Solo works
    a Far Later Period

    A Few Formalities Still Accorded

    Humans

    (2 titled pieces)

    All Answers Answer All Questions

    (5 C60 tapes; 10 titled pieces)

    All My Hummingbirds Have Alibis

    Amazonia

    (2 titled pieces)

    A Place of Shades

    (2 titled pieces)

    A Smell of Burnt Plastic and Rotten Oranges

    AWAKE (A Dance for Ireland)

    (5 titled pieces)

    Bad Space

    (2 titled pieces)

    Bears Weigh the Same as Snakes

    (2 titled pieces)

    Be Cool (Spazm)

    (5 titled pieces)

    Black Market

    (5 titled pieces)

    Breaking Ear

    (2 titled pieces)

    Breaking the Same Bottle Twice

    (2 titled pieces)

    Burning Tree (For Jack)

    Busy Signals

    (6 titled pieces)

    Celebration of the Sunrise

    (2 titled pieces)

    Cheap Friends

    (7 titled pieces)

    Chunk

    Circles of Night

    (4 titled pieces)

    Consciousness and Alchemy

    Cultural Crimes

    Death Star Splash

    (2 titled pieces)

    Delicate Remnants of the Intangible

    Removed and Preserved

    (2 titled pieces)

    Devil Music – Minóy Live at The Pub

    (3 titled pieces; PBK [Phil-

    lip B. Klingler] credited

    as “Guest Artist”)

    Doctor in a Dark Room

    (2 titled pieces)

    Dreamtime

    (2 titled pieces)

    Ejaculations (Paris, 1919)

    (2 titled pieces)

    Eternity Now

    Firebird

    (4 titled pieces)

    Flirtations With Madness

    (2 titled pieces)

    Future Perfect

    (7 titled pieces)

    Goombah Dogbreath

    (2 titled pieces)

    Hypomania

    I Can’t Even Talk About It Because I Am Living It

    Ice Cream Money

    (2 titled pieces)

    Infinite Journey

    In Search of Tarkovsky

    (2 titled pieces)

    In the Domain of the Double Moon

    (2 titled pieces)

    It’s No Game

    (2 titled pieces)

    Ivory Flash of Ambiguous Limbs

    (2 titled pieces)

    Jive Hot

    (2 titled pieces)

    Killer’s Kiss

    (2 titled pieces)

    Landscape with Serpent

    (2 titled pieces)

    Late Autumn

    (8 titled pieces)

    Life of the Life

    (5 titled pieces)

    Lunar Eclipse

    (2 titled pieces)

    Medea

    Media Synthesis

    (2 titled pieces)

    Musique Terminale

    (2 titled pieces)

    Natural Rhythm

    Neither Slumber Nor Sleep

    (2 titled pieces)

    Nervous Complaint

    (2 titled pieces)

    Nightslaves

    (3 titled pieces)

    Nocturnal Equations

    (4 titled pieces)

    Nostalghia

    Not Knowing What Thunder Collects

    Nuclear Swamp (For Arlen)

    (2 C60 tapes; Parts 1-4)

    Obscure Medicines

    (7 titled pieces)

    Our Desires Are Deprived of Cunning

    Music

    (5 titled pieces)

    Outback

    Panik Attak

    (3 titled pieces)

    Parts of Speech in the Nebula

    (2 titled pieces)

    Passage of the Migratory Bird

    Pelleas et Melisande

    Petty Jealousy

    (9 titled pieces)

    Plain Wrap Purgatory

    (2 titled pieces)

    Physical Radio

    Prelude To a Plague

    (2 titled pieces)

    Pretty Young Negro Man

    Priceless Mourning of Dead

    Loves and Collapsed Perfumes

    In Darker Waters

    (6 titled pieces)

    Psyberkynetyks

    (Radio broadcast – KKUP, Cuper-

    tino, CA, 5/8/88; excerpts from various

    Minóy tapes compiled by Jack Jordan

    and programmed by Don Campau;

    show hosted by Campau/Jordan)

    Radio Saddam

    Rules of the Game

    Secrets of The Talking Trees

    Shortwave Mantra

    Snap Diva

    (2 titled pieces)

    Solitude in a Motionless Migraine

    (2 titled pieces)

    Sound Proof

    (3 C60 tapes, 6 titled pieces)

    Spitting in Tongues

    (2 titled pieces)

    Spring Can Really Hang You Up

    The Most

    (2 titled pieces)

    Squeezing the Tongue of the

    Iguana Just to Hang On

    Ssunspotss

    (2 titled pieces)

    Surpass and Overtake

    (2 titled pieces)

    Stasis and Acceleration

    (2 titled pieces)

    Stress Management

    (2 titled pieces)

    Taksim

    (2 titled pieces)

    Tempest in a Teacup

    (3 titled pieces)

    Tension, Fear, and Depravity

    Tessh­u

    (2 titled pieces)

    That Which Momentously Declares

    Itself Not To Be I And Yet Must Be.

    It Could Be Nothing Else.

    The Art of Egyptian Bathing

    (2 titled pieces)

    The Caretaker of Denial

    (2 titled pieces)

    The Conditions of Postmodern Male

    Bonding

    (2 titled pieces)

    The Flavor of Acid on Ice

    (2 titled pieces)

    The Future of City Living

    The Great Wall

    (2 titled pieces)

    The Insomniac’s Halo of Worms

    (2 titled pieces)

    The Phantom Concerto

    (7 titled pieces)

    The Soul of a Tree

    (2 titled pieces)

    The Tyranny of Distance

    (2 titled pieces)

    The Well-Tuned Radio

    (3 C60 tapes, 6 titled pieces)

    The Zone

    (2 titled pieces)

    Then Perhaps a Last Time

    (4 titled pieces)

    Tomorrow and Tomorrow

    (2 titled pieces)

    Ugetsu

    (3 titled pieces)

    Urban Tribe

    (7 titled pieces)

    White With a Crust of Chill

    (2 titled pieces)

    XYZ

    (2 titled pieces)

    Minóy collaborations

    (“rc” = “research collaborator(s).” It is possible that a very few of these names are Stanley Bowsza [Minóy] recording solo under a pseudonym.)

    Andy Warhol’s Mother

    (Minóy & ?)

    The Silver Screen

    Darling Candy

    Anhedonia For Profit

    (Minóy & Mystery Hearsay)

    The Evolution of Cement

    Balance of Terror

    (rc; no info on J-card)

    Guilt for Dreaming

    Safe Sin

    No Fats, No Fems, Uncut

    Who Killed Fassbinder?

    Money, Power, Guilt, Lies,

    and More Lies (for David)

    Bwannóy

    (Minóy & Al Margolis)

    Deconstruction Workers

    The Ancients

    Darker Corners

    Disco Splendor

    (Minóy & Philip B. Klingler)

    “Command Performance

    (Live in Hell)”

    Skinned Alive

    The Divine Comedy

    Disco Splendor (cont’d.)

    Correct Music

    One Way

    Another Way

    New Wage

    Poverty is for Fools

    Elegy For a Wasteland

    Vicious Icon (Indeterminate Distance)

    Heteroglossia

    Suturing the Wound of Castration with

    Narrative

    The Copulation of Cliches

    The Limits of Liberation

    Dangling Scrotum Girls

    Mythology (recorded live)

    Less is Less

    Neutralize

    Dead Fun (Reprise)

    Dangling Scrotum Girls

    El Angel Exterminador

    (Minóy & Not-1/2)

    Sic Transit Gloria Suez Tuesday

    Provenance in Pencil

    Go Potty

    (Minóy & John Hudak)

    This Right After This

    Get Out, Do Places, Go Things

    Grandbrother

    (Minóy & Zan Hoffman)

    The Minóy Speakeasy Club

    Haints

    (Minóy, Richard Meade, Tobacco

    Spot, and Creative Thing)

    Mademoiselle

    Going Home

    My Life as a Haint

    Mysteries Unsolved

    Half Haints

    (Minóy & Tobacco Spot)

    How the West Was One

    Tumbleweed Factory

    April 1985 (“very rare, unmixed,

    unedited”) session

    Jazz and Get Fat

    (Minóy & Roger L. Moneymaker)

    Colombe Don’t Belong

    Improbable Resolutions for the

    Phantom of Cordelia

    Cathedral of Erotic Misery

    My Tragic Little Cat in the Great

    Dog’s Mouth

    Dog Mouth

    Peach Meat

    Basements Paved in Gold

    The Pacification of Conflicts

    Johnny Switchblade

    (Minóy, Christopher Smith, &

    Roger L. Moneymaker)

    L’amour Fou

    The Detachable Prostitute

    Juanita Fax

    (rc; no info on J-card)

    A Raincheck on Pain

    Dry Hump

    Lesbians of Color

    (Minóy & ?)

    Boy with Arms Akimbo

    Channels of Desire

    Trickfilm

    Drop Dead Gorgeous

    Lucy Godard

    (rc; no info on J-card)

    Á Bout de Souffle

    Mental Anguish/Minóy

    (Chris Phinney & Minóy)

    Affection of Hometown Scars

    Full Bloom (with Molly Ann

    Phinney)

    Minóy & Das Fröhliche Wohnzimmer

    (Minóy & _________)

    The Eternal Fires of Darkness

    Minóy & Tom Furgas

    (listed as “Tom Furgas & Minóy”)

    White Trash Can’t Handle Success

    Minóy/Hudak

    (Minóy & John Hudak)

    Requiem for Christina Paffgen

    Economic Determinism

    Minóy/PBK

    (Minóy & Phillip B. Klingler)

    “Chansons Mystiques”

    The Hermaphrodite with Eyeglasses

    and a Divining Rod

    And Your Eyes Are Soft Like the

    Hair of an Ape

    Minóy & Zan Hoffman

    M (Minóyzanthropy)

    MinóyZannoy

    (Minóy, Zan Hoffman, and

    Roger L. Montgomery)

    Minóyellstillife

    (Minóy & Zan Hoffman)

    Subdubminblast

    Binge Personality (for Lido)

    Moondogs

    Inverse Zanamintones

    Condoms or Corpses?

    Caught in the Throat of the Beast

    Forge a Pan

    MinoyZannoy (cont’d.)

    You Can Be Anything You Want

    to Be This Time Around

    Monochrome Melodrama

    A Simple Case of Hysteria

    Most of What You Deny is True

    Multiple Minóy

    The Sequel Without a Beginning

    The Persistence of an Insistent

    Memory

    The Persistence of Memory

    The Twists and Turns of The Loved And Hated M

    The Plan

    A Violent End

    Round One: Minóy vs. Zannoy

    XYZ

    Why Do the Cat’s Feet Blur

    Meat Rags

    Sodomy in the Supreme Court Lobby

    Subdubminblast

    No Mail on Sundays

    (Minóy & Damian Bisciglia [“Agog”])

    Blood and Semen

    In the Pit

    Worried Through a New Machine

    A Sensitive Boy

    Door Closed Door Open

    Radar Messages

    Patience Worth Minóy

    (Minóy & Dave Bush)

    Forgive Us Our Debut As We Forgive

    Those Who Debut Against Us

    Penelope Waste

    (rc; Minóy & ?)

    Stiff

    PM [Prescott/Minóy)

    (Dave Prescott & Minóy)

    Patches of Difficult Hours

    Sinfonia au Contraire

    Fertility

    Ever Becoming is Endless Dying

    Dancing About Architecture

    Systems Engineering

    Spaceshot

    Hotline

    Cybernetic Intercourse

    Soft Focus (Music Which Plays Itself)

    Second Thoughts

    Mr. Spazmodi

    On the Third Day

    “and the evening and the morning”

    The Dying Man (An Opera in Six

    Scenes)(text by Gertrude Stein

    and Minóy)

    PM By PM

    (Dave Prescott & Minóy)

    One PM

    Two PM

    PMP

    (Prescott/Minóy/Prescott)

    (Dave Prescott intentionally credited

    twice)

    And Grinding Dairies

    Parking Fords, and Porking

    Feminists

    PMZ

    (Dave Prescott, Minóy, and Zan

    Hoffman)

    Zamindar

    Speedo Van Gogh

    (rc; no info on J-card)

    Sorry, Sorry Night

    No Sale!

    Victims of Cinerama

    (Minóy & Dan Fioretti)

    Every Twelve Hundred Hours or a

    New Stewardess….

    The Hip, Far-Out and Groovy Sounds

    of Tomorrow

    Fun with Bernice and Her Yuppie

    Girlfriends (Including the Return

    of Waltzing Matilda)

    Minóy Erases the Tapes of The

    Partridge Family Reunion Album

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